The turnover checklist is what separates a business from a hobby

A guest is not buying a clean apartment. They are buying the same clean apartment that the last forty guests photographed and reviewed. That sameness is the entire product, and it does not come from hiring somebody conscientious. It comes from writing down what has to be true at the end of every turnover and checking it.

Why a written list beats a good cleaner

• People have bad days, get rushed, and skip the thing they did last time. A list survives all of that
• Cover is possible. When your usual cleaner is unavailable, a list means the substitute produces roughly the same result
• It makes standards discussable without it being personal. The list was not done, rather than you did a bad job
• It scales. One unit runs on memory, four do not. See scaling to five units
• It catches the non cleaning failures, which are the ones that actually cost you money

Half the items on a good turnover checklist have nothing to do with cleaning, and those are the half that prevent the expensive failures.

The cleaning half

Room by room, specific rather than general. “Clean the bathroom” is not an instruction, it is a hope.

• Bathroom: shower screen and grout, behind the toilet, plugholes and the drain, mirror, taps, extractor grille
• Kitchen: inside the fridge, inside the microwave, the hob and behind it, the kettle descaled, the bin washed rather than just emptied, cupboards checked for the previous guest’s food
• Bedroom: fresh linen, under the bed, behind the headboard, pillow protectors checked, wardrobe emptied of hangers with nothing on them and things left behind
• Living: under and behind the sofa cushions, skirting, balcony floor and railing, windows and sills
• Everywhere: floors, switches and handles, and the smell of the place, which is the first thing a guest registers

The standard and how to hold it are covered in how clean is clean enough.

The half that is not cleaning

1. Top up the electricity meter to a set floor, every single time. The most preventable failure in Nairobi hosting. See managing prepaid electricity
2. Run the hot water and confirm it arrives, at the shower, not the basin
3. Test the wifi on a phone, connected to the guest network, not by looking at the router lights
4. Change the door code and confirm the new one works
5. Restock consumables to counted quantities, not by judgement
6. Run every tap and pour water down the floor drains,which prevents smells and drain flies in a unit that stood empty
7. Check every light bulb, including the ones in lamps nobody uses
8. Check the remotes and their batteries, television and air conditioner
9. Test the lock batteries and the UPS on a schedule
10. Inspect linen and towels in daylight and retire anything worn rather than folding it away
11. Register the incoming guest with security and confirm parking if it was booked
12. Walk in as a guest would, at the end, and look at the apartment from the doorway

Not everything belongs on every turnover

• Every turnover: the full clean, consumables, the meter, hot water, wifi, the code, the photographs
• Monthly: inverter and UPS test under load, window screens, deeper appliance clean, linen inspection
• Quarterly: pest treatment, mattress rotation, descaling, a proper look at the grout and the sealant
• Annually: repaint the marks, replace the tired soft goods, reshoot the photographs if the apartment has changed

How Goldstay handles it

Every managed unit runs the same written turnover, with the non cleaning checks weighted as heavily as the cleaning, and photographs filed at the end of each one. Owners see the standard rather than being asked to trust it, which is the point of the arrangement.

Handing the operation over is the other option: here is how our Nairobi short-stay management works.

Related reading: the house manual and choosing a management company.